Richard Wright, Archive Technology Manager at BBC Future Media & Technology, has asked us to mention his Libraries for Lesotho project which he is currently raising funds for. In summary:

A million books for a thousand students – in Lesotho! Richard Wright, audiovisual archive technology manager at the BBC, is taking three months off to work in Lesotho (optimism: career break at 61). HIV/AIDS is running at 40% out there. As Richard wouldn’t be much use as a nurse, his plan is to help their library move from books on shelves to free electronic resources. A million books (and much more) are online, and a container of 200 computers would double the library’s existing facilities — providing access for an additional 1000 students, per day! All it takes is £11,000. All the information is here: http://www.justgiving.com/lesotho

He mentions that he aims to have the computers shipped ‘loaded up with open-source books’.

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Dr. Jonathan Gray is Lecturer in Critical Infrastructure Studies at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London, where he is currently writing a book on data worlds. He is also Cofounder of the Public Data Lab; and Research Associate at the Digital Methods Initiative (University of Amsterdam) and the médialab (Sciences Po, Paris). More about his work can be found at jonathangray.org and he tweets at @jwyg.